Absolutely not. It is fundamentally impossible to have some health right and also allow people to have as many babies as they want. Averaging more than 2 babies in a finite space such as Earth, kills.

The groups of people suffering starvation related child mortality is exactly what must happen when we average too many babies and our numbers are at the limit. (The limit can be increased, thus being at the limit, does not mean there is a static population number).

Our scientists, including leading population scientists like Paul Ehrlich, don’t understand this fact of nature, and therefore it is not possible to say that the science of public health is advanced enough for universal health.

In my MAHB Library contribution to this globally important discussion, “Stress R Us”, I elaborated my belief that virtually all human disease is caused by our over-active Stress Response and that the medical professions, and I am a retired physician, are responsible for counter-acting these stress induced population regulation mechanisms, but only at ever greater expense. Humans have been successful in undoing nearly all of Nature’s efforts to halt and reduce our exploding numbers. However, even our brilliant efforts will soon be inadequate to prevent an increasing stress induced die-off and epidemic of stress hormone induced infertility, resulting in an involuntary and dramatic reduction of our numbers. Only single child families will allow future generations to pull back from the otherwise inevitable population collapse.

On ‘the right to be as healthy as possible’ add ‘responsibility’ to live in balance with other life on the planet among other responsibilities. Healthy people are high fertility people and combined with our ability to provide death control, we have to factor in fertility control, but that is obvious. Maximizing healthcare within limits is one goal among others. Most of us do not have access to a healthcare system, but to a sickcare system. We live fast and free until issues arise then demand treatment, and the sickcare system loves to provide aggressive expensive treatment (i.e. profitable).

A healthcare system would focus on preventative and palliative care with treatment as the fallback position if appropriate, available, affordable, but not as a right. A liver transplant for an alcoholic is not reasonable. Most Americans die secondary to effects of ‘activity intolerance’ made possible my ‘labor saving’ or rather movement saving devices that we have been oversold on.

Death with dignity and minimal pain is reasonable and achievable. As we “health care” providers know, we don’t heal, we help bodies heal themselves by and large and only rarely save a life (I was an ER RN). Patient education comes first, costs less, and is primary, then comes prevention and palliative care. Sickcare treatment is not, though it is nice to provide if reasonably possible. I don’t expect ‘the system’ to extend my life by a few days or months at any cost even if I were an elite and could afford it. In an affordable healthcare system, a reasonable level of basic care can and should be provided to all citizens along with fertility control as a package deal.